


Fenced In

by Transom



Category: Shane (1953)
Genre: Found Family, Multi, when your homesteader family fosters an old stray gunslinger and decides to adopt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29496537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transom/pseuds/Transom
Summary: Shane comes in from the cold.
Relationships: Joe Starrett/Marian Starrett/Shane
Kudos: 1





	Fenced In

A crescent shadow shimmered over the tender green grass of the valley, wheeling back and knifing through the clear running stream. Joe paused in his posthole digging to look up and watch the hawk make anxiously searching circles against the bright blue sky, lean and hungry and fast. He wished he had the rifle with him to scare it off. He didn’t need any more of those birds taking his chickens, didn’t want Marian to have to bake biscuits to trade to the Lewis’ for eggs again. 

The thought of Marian and her cooking made his achy stomach gurgle and brought a small pained groan to his wind-dried lips. The sounds made Shane stop what he was doing, too, his eyebrows raising as he leaned casually on the post he had just pounded into the ground. 

He didn’t have to ask if Joe wanted to call it a day’s work, simply smirking as Joe shook his head and bravely forged on. He had set a goal for himself to at least make it as far as the creek, knowing Shane would follow dutifully behind him, not about to let on how tired and hungry he surely was too. 

Working had kept them warm, but as the sun lowered and the fence rose like a slow-growing snarl of vines in their wake, the late-spring mountain chill set in, making their not-so-young-anymore fingers stiffen and their noses run so they had to stop often and wipe at them with their sleeves. They made it to the creek despite all that, Joe digging and Shane sledgehammering, before doing the wiring together, the cold metal rubbing their fingers raw and the barbs catching on their clothes and their skin and making them curse under their breath. But when Joe looked back on what they had raised together, he had to smile, his breath puffing out into the gathering violet, just able to make out Shane’s answering signature smirk. 

He clapped Shane on the shoulder as they headed for the homestead, trudging over their land that was course and wild, a stiff tangle underfoot. The darkness made them trip, Joe going to the ground first on his weak, exhausted legs, though Shane quickly got his comeuppance for laughing. After Joe hauled him up out of the mud by one sinewy forearm, he leaned in to him like a yearling colt who was getting too big for it, asking Joe to hold his arm the rest of the way to the cabin. 

Dinner was so much better now, with Shane across the table from Joe, the toes of their boots interlocking. Marian glowed to watch them both eat, while Joey had taken to imitating even the way Shane held his elbows just off the table as he chewed. After eating quickly, Joe dropped a kiss upon their son’s head as he went to wash up, wanting to finish sanding the stepstool Marian had asked him to make, the last thing he had to do before bed. 

It would be cold again that night, and Shane slinked off to his cot a bit like a dog to his rug, Marian watching him go from above her darning. Joey called for a bedtime story and she inhaled, deep and sharp like she was waking from a dream, before turning her softened eyes on her boy and letting him drag her to his bedroom. 

Joe waited for her on the edge of their bed, his boots reluctantly toed off and down to his long underwear and socks, his feet aching with cold where he kept them pressed resolutely to the floor. He waited up until Marian had put out the lamp in Joey’s room and the door had creaked closed behind her, pushing a weak smile at her through the lamplight. 

She took him into her arms and he knew she hated it, hated it just like he did. He clung to her nightdress like a baby, wanting her to make it better, to suggest what he couldn’t. 

“It’s cold,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. “Isn’t it, dear?” 

“It is. Too cold for this time of year.” 

“Maybe this is normal. Maybe all the other years we’ve been here we’ve just been lucky.” 

“I don’t know, honey.” He kissed her hair, short and blond, soft curls that reminded him. “I think you might be on to something.” 

She pulled back, and her eyes were wet. Her lips were twitchy, like she was thinking about asking, but then she looked away, sniffling and holding her knuckles to her mouth. She tipped her head back to look at the ceiling and closed her eyes, then let it fall forward again with a small sigh. That was her decision, made. 

Her stocking feet and her plain nightdress whispered as she left the small, chill room. The open door let in the moonlight and out the lamplight, competing slivers like fractured ice on a dark lake. Joe swallowed, his mouth dry, and went under the blanket to keep warm and make himself small, not wanting to startle anybody. 

Marian returned with Shane in tow, still in his one set of now not-so-new clothes. She was shyly beaming, and he had that smirk on when he looked at Joe, though it faded into a polite schoolboy look as Marian held up a spare set of Joe’s long underwear to him for size. 

He dressed turned sideways to them, as Marian crawled back into bed with Joe and wrapped around him, smiling and content. Shane came to roost on Joe’s side of the bed, stock still, and only with the help of Joe’s fingertips on his ribs did he let himself lie back, stiff as an old stump. Once felled, he turned towards Joe, the wild-horse whites of his eyes two shimmering crescent moons. 

“Just for tonight?” he croaked, looking from Joe to Marian and back, his elbows folded up at Joe’s side as Joe wound an arm around his shoulders. 

“It’s all we can get out of you, isn’t it?” Joe teased him. 

Shane always knew when he’d been beat, all the fight evaporating from his body in the form of a hoarse chuckle. He just barely blushed at himself, tucking his nose into Joe’s side and presenting him with another head of short, blonde hair to kiss. Joe did and nearly cried at the relief of the breeze that had come down out of the mountain clouds, sweeping the valley and drafting through the cracks in the cabin to swirl and die peacefully in the warm flicker of the lamp at their feet. He shivered, wanting to draw a high fence around all he had, not to keep things out but to keep things in, no need for a handle to their gate or a reason why any of them should have to take a hard line.


End file.
